How to Improve Alexa Ranking and Get Your Score Below 200,000

After a great deal of effort, I have finally been able to improve Alexa ranking and get a score below 200,000! Chances are if you’re reading this post, then you already realize the relevance of obtaining a low Alexa ranking.

When I first started my blog, I had never even heard of Alexa nor knew anything about its rating system. But as I started networking with other bloggers and recognizing what statistics they felt were important, I realized that having a great Alexa ranking was one of the areas I needed to pay attention to.

Two and a half months ago was the first time I checked my Alexa ranking. It was somewhere north of 2,700,000. “This is going to be impossible” I thought. I felt discouraged.

But yet I stuck to it and achieved success! And there’s no way I could I have done it without the support those who helped me along the way. So in return, I wanted to create this tutorial for anyone who needs help accomplishing the same goal of getting their Alexa ranking as low as possible. If you are relatively new to blogging and are searching for a way to improve your own Alexa ranking, then please read on.

What Is Alexa?

Alexa is a company that collects and analyzes global web metrics. It gathers its data from the millions of people who use its software (mainly its browser toolbar) as well as other proprietary resources. Alexa is owned by Amazon.com.

Each day, Alexa indexes every website and assigns it a rank. The lower your Alexa ranking, the better (#1 is Google and #2 is Facebook). The higher your Alexa ranking (somewhere in the upper hundred thousands or millions), it is assumed that people don’t visit your site very often.

Although we explain the Alexa ranking in more detail below, it is important to remember that the rank number is all relative – your website doing better than someone else’s and vice versa. Think of it like driving your car on the expressway. Even though you may think you’re going fast, others may be going faster. Others may be going slower. Your rank will constantly move around not just based on your performance, but also based on how well other websites around you are doing.

Why Do I Want to Improve My Alexa Ranking for My Blog?

Do you hope to earn money with your blog? If so, then you need to pay attention to your Alexa ranking. Advertisers will make judgments about your website based on your Alexa ranking just like they do based on your Google PageRank and SEOmoz MozRANK.

Whether or not you agree with the way that Alexa calculates its rankings, the fact still remains that it does come under consideration. Therefore, if you seek to monetize your blog, you’re going to need to put some effort into reducing this rank to as low of an Alexa ranking as possible.

The goal of reaching an Alexa ranking below of 200,000 is simply a popular opinion held by many bloggers as being when advertisers finally start to take notice of you. I should also mention that there are other bloggers that see this goal as being somewhere below 150,000 or 100,000. As you can guess, the value of your blog is in the eye of the advertiser, and will vary from one to the other. In general, the better your Alexa ranking, the better advertising fees you should be able to negotiate.

Let’s dissect this seemingly innocent statement into its “Elements” to establish what actions we think would benefit our strategy:

Elements:

1. The primary data comes from the Alexa Toolbar (i.e. users that have it installed on their web browser).

2. Data comes from other sources, but the description is very vague. Therefore, we can disregard this statement due to lack on substantial content.

3. The data is based on a three-month collection period.

4. Alexa ranking is based on the number of users (people who visited).

5. Alexa ranking is based on page views by the users.

Actions You Can Take to Improve Alexa Ranking:

Step 1 – Download the Alexa toolbar and claim your blog with Alexa.

Element 1 states that Alexa gathers its data from the toolbars that its users have installed on their web browsers.

Guess what? If you have a toolbar installed, then this also includes visits made by you. And who is going to visit your site more than you? So by downloading and installing the Alexa toolbar yourself, you’ll automatically receive ranking credit with each visit to your own site. When you install the toolbar, you can also take the opportunity to claim with Alexa (for free).

Got more than one computer? Install the toolbar in a few locations. Do your friends and family visit your site often? Encourage others who might also visit your site frequently to install it as well so that their visits will count towards your Alexa ranking. Remember, the toolbar is where Alexa gathers its primary data.

Step 2 – Install the Alexa Widget on your site.

The theory here is that installing this widget on your blog will turn all traffic (not just Alexa toolbar users) into ranking data.

This is the one tip where the jury is still out, but I would do it anyways. A great deal of bloggers insist that it helps (although a I did find a few small comments that claimed it did not). I unfortunately could not find any legitimate proof one way or the other on Alexa’s website.

Like other blog widgets, data can be transmitted back and forth. Therefore, it seems logical that the Alexa widget could be collecting traffic data as some people suggest. Ultimately, I decided to install it on my site just for the shear potential of converting all page visits towards my rank. What would be the harm?

(Update 5/01/2012) Per communication with Alexa’s customer service, I have learned that adding the Alexa Widget to your blog or website does NOT affect or help your Alexa ranking. It simply just displays your stats to your visitors and nothing more.

Step 3 – Write some really good posts!

Recall that Elements 4 and 5 state that your Alexa ranking is based on the number of users and page views. No where in Alexa’s definition does it state that the singular act of posting alone will help you achieve a better rank. But the theory here is that by posting great content, you will give people something worth reading, they will stay for a while, and they will come back to your site; all of which will improve Alexa ranking.

Don’t burn yourself out on posting! Get into a rhythm of developing and publishing some quality content a few times per week. And if you think that posting everyday is the trick – think again. Through my own observation, I have visited some sites that publish once a week but still maintain an Alexa ranking below 200,000. It all depends on how you develop traffic patterns.

Remember also that data for your Alexa ranking is based on a three-month (12 week) period of traffic data. So even if you have one week where you have no posts but eleven outstanding other weeks, it is unlikely that your Alexa ranking will slip too badly.

The important thing is not to let your traffic get away! Hence a steady flow of good quality posts should naturally help build your readership.

Step 4 – Comment … A LOT!

Steps 1 and 2 are pretty easy. Step 3 is also pretty much a given if you plan on having a successful blog. Step 4 is where the work begins!

Expect to spend more time visiting other blogs than you spend working on your own! Why? Because commenting on other blogs accomplishes many things:

• You form relationships with other bloggers who will reciprocate visiting your blog.

• You attract would-be readers to your blog by leaving your name, Gravatar image, and links to your articles all over the web.

The easiest way to do this is to join a group or community of bloggers. This can be done formally or informally. Bloggers and readers from this support group visit each other’s website regularly and comment often. All this action leads to an improved Alexa ranking. (Note: This process should happen naturally. Don’t join “link exchange” groups or anything that promotes gaming the system. Google breaks up groups like this and may penalize you).

Another way is to make friends the old fashioned way by simply finding blogs similar to yours. Again, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of using this step to create bonds with others. It will pay off!

Whatever you do, DON’T SPAM the blogging world. Leaving comments like “Hi” or “Great job” are pretty lame and add no value to the discussion. Do you want people to get interested and visit your blog? Entice them with meaningful comments. State your opinion. Ask questions. Have healthy debates. Be funny. Find a way to stand out.

Please remember that the act of commenting alone doesn’t result in a better Alexa ranking. One mistake people make is thinking that commenting on more sites will lead to a better rank. Alexa’s own FAQ clears this up:

Step 5 – Continue to drive traffic to your site.

Recall again that Elements 4 and 5 are about driving traffic to your site and getting them to visit as many pages as possible. Similar to Step 3 with creating quality content and Step 4 with attracting attention using comments, you will want to also exhaust as many other strategies as possible to get people to visit your blog and add to your Alexa ranking. Here are a few simple ways you can encourage more organic traffic to come to your site:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Optimize your site so that it gets found naturally when people search the Internet for whatever your blog is about. You do this by using a lot of keywords, having interesting post titles, using tags, adding descriptions, simplifying your permalinks, organizing your categories, registering with all the major search engines, etc. Yoast has by far one of the best free guides available on this topic!

• Social Media. Everyone knows about Facebook and Twitter. Using sites like this are an easy way to advertise your posts, share your links, and get people to come visit you.

• Blog Carnivals. Blog communities frequently post large collections of posts called carnivals. This is beneficial to readers because it becomes a one-stop shop to read dozens of “greatest hits” blog posts. This is also beneficial to publishers because it is an easy way to get noticed and attract some readers. To participate, simply search the Internet for carnivals on your subject and submit your best work each week.

• Give Some Link Love. Many bloggers selflessly post links on their blogs to posts that they read and loved. Not only is this a great way to build comradery, but you will often find that the gesture gets reciprocated.

• Do Guest Posts. Want to get readers at one site to notice you? Offer to write a guest post. No second rate posts – write something you would post on your own blog! Approach a site you have a good relationship with and offer to write a great post for free. Most bloggers, feeling overwhelmed and busy, will welcome the free assistance! Remember to be grateful and appreciative!

What Not to Do:

Don’t get discouraged! Remember that from Element 3 that your Alexa ranking is based on three months worth of data. When I first became aware of my score at 2.7 million, that meant that for the next three months I had some pretty awful data on “my personal Alexa record” (if you will) that I had to work my way out of. As I started to try these rank building strategies and make improvements, my Alexa ranking started to come down, but it took time.

You may also notice that some newer blogs will seem to have their rank drop faster than yours. My theory here is that Alexa has less data on a newer blog, and that therefore a newer blog which is already receiving attention will not have to deal with terrible past data to keep its rank from falling slower.

Like we mentioned before, the rank is relative. So perhaps you are doing everything right, but so is everyone else! That will make it harder to see your rank drop.

Also expect that as you get lower and lower, the competition will get more and more fierce. In the beginning, you may see your Alexa ranking drop each week by several 100,000 spots, then by a few 10,000 spots. Eventually you’ll slow down to just a few 1,000 spots. As your Alexa ranking will fall slower and slower, and you’ll really have to work hard to get that number down as low as possible.

Conclusions:

In summary, install the toolbar and widget, create some great content, and go make some friends! Beyond that, don’t get too caught up or obsessed!

Getting your score down may have some financial implications, but remember to make it fun! Get to know the people who are trying to accomplish the same goals as you and let it fall naturally. The process will become far more rewarding when it becomes less of a chore and more of something you can enjoy!

Email Address

Readers: How were you able to improve Alexa ranking and get it to drop? What other tips or experiences can you share that would be beneficial to others?

in june 2012 , i had alexa rank of about 55,000 for my tech site , Students Crunch , but a small part could get you into disaster , yea my domain went offline for a week due to problem in the name server , but i managed to get it back by moving the domain to godaddy ( it took another week ) , see what happens ?

My alexa rank is consistantly increasing , now it reached almost 145,000 . It’s very sad , now i dont know what to do ?

I lost my confident , improving Alexa rank again , if you have any ideas please let me know ..

As long you keep getting the same amount of traffic as you had before from users who have the Alexa toolbar, this problem should only be temporary. Remember that your score is based on 3 months worth of data, so losing all your traffic for a little bit will cause this moving average to go up. But as you gain your traffic back and keep getting solid page views and time spent on your site, time will allow this blemish to pass, and I bet your number will get back to being lower.

Hello
Last some weeks i am working on this working Project. Here i got some experience in alexa ranking. Its take several time than i use alexa audit then its working superb. Really alexa is good extension counting traffic in the web.

I agree that it mostly comes down to hard work and consistency. It’s all about getting your name out there and networking with other bloggers. Keep in mind that other bloggers are much more likely to have the toolbar installed compared to regular visitors. So if alexa is important to you, make sure you get a lot of traffic from fellow bloggers.Modest Money recently posted..Purchasing Life Insurance on a Budget

5 weeks actually 🙂 I had the big advantage of having no previous traffic history on my blog to weigh it down. Plus a website marketing background helps tremendously.Modest Money recently posted..Purchasing Life Insurance on a Budget

You have done well in getting your ranking to drop. I agree, it takes diligence, but if you work at it, and especially if you write good content, it will indeed come down.Thad P @ thadthoughts.com recently posted..Ten Vacation Ideas That Don’t Have to Cost a Bundle

Congratulations on reaching your goal. That’s awesome. Also some great advice on building a community and relationships.

On the Alexa ranking, I would recommend not to beat yourself up about the score too much. It’s an easy system to game because it mainly records visits by people with the Alexa toolbar. The top advertisers uses other tools for traffic tracking such as Omniture.

As my marketing person explains, Alexa will throw your site up on a general screen but they then drill down to actual numbers for the money.

If you’re trying to make money from the site, figure out your target market and who your customers are. Focus on that for the real revenue.Kim @Money and Risk recently posted..What To Do When You Win The Lottery

Thank you very much! I am starting to receive some cold-call emails, but I have turned most of them down since they were no more rewarding then say Google Adsense. I also have the issue of a low Google PageRank as well as a few other scores. I do expect these to improve since they are updated every few months are so, and a lot has happened since the last update. Once all the stars are aligned, I believe I will have the groundwork laid for advertisers to make their approach.

You’ve definitely covered it all! I’d put a heavy emphasis on commenting for sure. I was able to get my Alexa down to 87K (where it’s at right now) and I’m not convinced advertisers really care about Alexa; it seems as if my advertisers are more attracted by PR. But who knows.Daisy @ Add Vodka recently posted..Saturday Links & Blogs I Love: Motivation Edition

It looks like I’ll never get to 87K because I’ll never be able to match your commenting regimen! You may be on to something with the Alexa and PageRank relationship. However, many of the tactics used for Alexa also help raise PR – or so I hope! I’m still waiting to see if I increase to a “2” next time!

I think it comes down to writing good content and attracting more visitors with Alexa toolbar. Nice article. I just broke 200K. It took 7 weeks.Shilpan recently posted..5 Keys to Win Customers for Life

I’m curious if installing the Alexa toolbar and visiting your own website really makes much of a difference. Alexa can see that visits are coming from a single IP address and they surely won’t rate you higher based on the actions of a single user. Yes I agree that every little bit counts, considering the number of Alexa users, the extra boost is quite negligible.Mike@ Investing in Silver recently posted..Mexican Silver Libertads

Alexa counting visits from your own toolbar is one of the big criticisms of the Alexa rank. Early in my research I recall reading one blog post where the author installed the toolbar on several computers and was able to “manipulate” his score lower without any true traffic. From my own observation, I noticed my rank decreasing once I installed mine. Of course, the number dropped dramatically once I started boosting commenting and networking.

Thanks for all the strategies. I just started working on my Alexa ranking last week. I started at 20 million, and am down just below 2 million in about a week and a half. I wonder, like some others have said, whether or not Alexa discounts when you look at your own site based on repeated IP addresses.

Also, I think there are some privacy issues with Alexa. I don’t love that everything I do on the internet is being tracked. So I have installed Alexa in Chrome, which I use specifically for blogging activities, and I do all my non-blogging activities in Firefox.Earth and Money recently posted..Can Frugality Trump Honesty?

Thanks! I hope they help! I understand your doubt about the toolbar, but if you research other “how-to’s” on Alexa, you may find more evidence of this opinion. For example, I have the toolbar installed on 3 computers (two at home and one at work). Only one is registered to my blog. So how could Alexa know me from a casual viewer? Regardless, I saw my rank drop dramatically after I started using the toolbars and even before I started receiving traffic. That’s a pretty creative strategy to maintaining some level of privacy with your Internet viewing!

You’re welcome! I hope these tips help! Honestly it was like running a marathon trying to keep up with the commenting, posting, and traffic generation – much more of a time investment than I originally thought I was going to make!

When I joined the Yakezie Challenge close to two months ago my Alexa was around 12million. After I started commenting and connecting with other bloggers I dropped super fast. I think you’re right when you say you have to spend more time reading and commenting on other blogs than working on your own. It’s fun but it’s a lot of work.

This is a great accomplishment, congrats! I just got my Alexa ranking below 200,000 this past month (March) so I totally know the feeling. 🙂 You share some excellent tips here, not just for people looking to get a better ranking. Some of the tips I’ve done, but some of them I didn’t realize/think about.

I definitely agree that being social and commenting on other blogs is really important. Creating relationships within the blogging community is a very relevant part of blogging in general (and getting a good rank).Carrie Smith recently posted..Save Money on Spring Cleaning With These 6 Tips

For some reason I thought you were already below 200K. 🙂 In any case, congratulations! You’re right. Besides rank, there is definitely an upside to being social on the web. Plus I’m doing what I originally set out to do – learn more about personal finance from other people who are trying to get rich like me!

Getting visitors is much more rewarding. And there are other ranks that advertisers deem as more important like PageRank. As long as you focus on your readers and stay active on other sites, things should naturally fall into place.

Thanks for the tips, I hadn’t even done step two before reading this! Congratulations — what happens when you reach 200,000? I’m hoping for a leprechaun or something magical, like 9038 advertisers vying for my internet real estate. 🙂Frugal Portland recently posted..State of my Debts: April Check in

So far not much. I too was expecting something magical like a choir of angels to sing, the clouds to part, and a single ray of sunshine to beam down upon my laptop. But so far my inbox has been quiet and my Paypal account has not been increasing like the National Deficit counter in Times Square. I think the issue is that my Google PageRank is too low (1). I’ve heard that a 2 or higher is when advertisers start to take notice. Lately I’ve been looking into how I can improve this score next.

and went live early this year. It ranked 20million (M) over. When I started posting my articles on a regular basis, it dropped to 7.6M on 12 April 2012. A I continuously writing quality posts and doing linking program with other relevant and quality sites, my rank drop even further. Todate, it stands at 692,ooo(K). But I noticed that it has increase from 664K to 692K. Not sure what exactly happened but I think could be because my postings were slower because I was sick. That’s my 2 cents.Lazulikey recently posted..Ex boyfriend

Thanks! I’m glad I could help. Don’t be surprised, your rank will bounce around like that. Keep on working on attracting other bloggers to your site that have the Alexa toolbar installed. Join a forum that is within your niche.

one of my website’s http://bestway2earnmoney.com/ alexa rank is fixed.. lol i don’t see any increase or discrese last 3 month. I checked everything including alexa verification. All id fine So i’m really wondaring to see the behaviour of alexa. But it seems your well written article may help to resolve it. to follow

Usually I do not read post on blogs, however I wish
to say that this write-up very forced me to try and do so!
Your writing style has been surprised me. Thank you, quite great post.boost alexa ranking recently posted..boost alexa ranking

Interesting article. As I see it, I have some work to do. My ranking used to be in the 800 K a few months back, and now for some reason it’s up to 8 million, I haven’t changed anything like posting frequence, so it muct be less users using the Alexa toolbar.

My blogs Alexa ranks is 18,908,401 and is steadily increasing. I have been trying to decrease it for the past few months without much success, so I am grateful for theses tips. I’m excited about following them and seeing how things go! Thanks again!Danielle recently posted..7 Effective Steps To Blogging Success

Good advice, I just was reading here yesterday and then went to alexa did all the things you said and today I have twice the traffic and one million boost in alexa rating! from 6 million to 5 million overnight with a month old site. I think that most people don’t know this stuff, I did not. ThankyouJason Brown@ San Antonio Photographer recently posted..Build Backlinks DoFollow Photography Blog

Great article which basically is a checklist for readers to help improve in this area. I am new to this game but have been employing some of your tips and it has really helped. There are some things I was not aware of such as Yoast and carnivals so thanks for those and all your other tips.

You’re welcome Steven. Basically if you are patient and can just keep driving other bloggers (or people who use Alexa) to your site (including yourself!!), then your score will drop without much effort over time.

Great article. I see that your Alexa rank is far greater yet these days! Congrats!
If you’re wanting a nicer looking Alexa widget, I created an alternative. As you suggested, I would still recommend the toolbar for improving rankings though.

Thanks Jeff, and welcome to the site. Yes, my Alexa has been around 80K to 90K for a while now. It never really seems to move from that bracket, but that is okay with me. Since writing this article, I’ve become a little more focused on building traffic. Even though its been slow, the progress is steady and it tells me I’m heading in the right direction.

Its a funny metric. It’s supposed to measure traffic, but you can get your rank down without actually receiving a lot of traffic. Inversely, you can also receive a lot of regular traffic and not get your rank to go down. That’s great you were able to sell your site. Good luck with getting below 500K.

I have to admit I never really looked in to how the Alexa ranking was calculated. I had no idea that it takes the last 3 months of data, so that makes me feel better about my blog not being as low as I expected it to be. I can’t recommend posting meaningful comments and writing great content that engages readers. Both of those are step 1 and 2 to creating a successful blog.JC @ Passive-Income-Pursuit recently posted..2 Buys and 2 Option Transactions

Once I learned that it was based on a 3 month cumulative, I also felt a lot better. You could have a few bad weeks and hardly feel any change in score at all. But for those trying to drop their score down fast, that also means there is a lot of dead-weight on the backend to carry with them.

MMD great, thanks for this list. I found a lot of useful topics and advice what to improve (like the number of sites where I must leave my trail, which became a tedious work). So I am going back to the basics and staying with my fellow niche bloggers.

My Niche Site Updates also contain a lot of my “what worked” and “what didn’t work” in terms of trying to improve search engine position. There are also a lot of useful links to other sites within them that you will find helpful.

Thanks, I’ll review it and see. I started working on the rank when I joined Yakezie Network. At first I got totally scared as my rank was close to 2 million, but using the strategies you are mentioning, my rank is now down to 200k within 2 months. But I also wish to improve my PR and search engine positions. For some reason I am doing something wrong.Martin recently posted..My inspiration in the last week #23

This was a super helpful post, it’s also perfectly optimized to show up right on top of ‘how to better my alexa rank’ good job! We started our blog a few months ago and we were sitting at 15 million, after installing the bar and putting effort into commenting and driving traffic for a few weeks we dropped down to 1 million. I’m anticipating the dropping slowing way down, but as a member of the Yakezie challenge it’s helped keep us motivated to find new ways to promote the blog.Krista recently posted..Why You Should Take Care of Your Stuff

You are welcome! Though I should point out that I’ve come to realize that your Alexa rank is not quite as important as other metrics such as your Google PageRank, moz Trust, and especially your SERP rank for various keywords. If you’d like some more advice on those topics look under my Passive Income > Blogging category.

Hey MMD, glad you pointed me to the information on your site. A lot of this stuff works like a charm as I have tried and tested them before. You have aome really good content here. One question though…to you actually find that the lower score helps with adverts and pricing vs DA,PA and PR or would you say its a combination of them all?Thomas | Your Daily Finance recently posted..June Stats, Updates, Goals, and Future Plans

It’s easy to get discouraged when it seems that ranking changes aren’t necessarily reflecting an increase in page views. I’ve actually tried to stop looking at my rank more than once a week, just for my own mental health.Rebecca recently posted..‘The Peanuts Movie’ Cast is Announced

I definitely agree everything you’ve said, it takes time but worth giving your time and attention, I started blogging 4months ago, my alexa rank wax 7 million to start with, I don’t pay attention because I am not familiar with alexa that time, although I blog consistently, to my amazement I am down to 2.8million up to this date, it improves daily, I just started my 30 blog challenge today.what excites me is when I heard success stories from other people, it keeps me going.

[…] John S from Fugal Rules, Jeremy from Modest Money, Vincent and Ryan from Planwise. MMD from MyMoneyDesign also helped greatly with this article he sent me about lowering your Alexa ranking (yes, I’m […]

[…] Alexa is a service run and operated by Amazon.com. Through a fairly extensive formula, Alexa calculates its number each day. The major way Alexa collects this information is through the use of a toolbar individuals install into their web browser, and is only calculated by those who have this toolbar. They’re looking for things such as page views and the number of people who’ve visited your site. If you’re looking for a more in-depth explanation of what Alexa is and how it works, I recommend My Money Design’s post How I Got My Alexa Ranking Below 200,000. […]

More Lifestyle

Archives

Archives

My Money Design is for entertainment and reference purposes only. The information presented is the opinion of the author only and should not be interpreted as specific advice or recommendations towards your financial situation. Always consult with a true professional before making any financial decisions.

Affiliate Disclaimer: My Money Design may be compensated for our personal opinions, reviews, and affiliate relationships with some of the featured products and services. Google Adsense and Amazon Associates are examples of such relationships. Such content, advertising space or posts may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content. All offers or claims are subject to change without notice and should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.